Thursday, May 14, 2009

There’s a lot of ways you could label Vacuum Flowers by Michael Swanwick: cyberpunk, post-cyberpunk, pre-transhuman, post-posthuman … and all those other silly labels pretentious science fiction reviewers and nit-picking analysts have been sticking on various books since the genre began to be taken -- or took itself -- too seriously.

But I have a better label for it. One I think says a lot more about this delightful book than any pre- or post- definition anyone could give it.

Sure, Vacuum Flowers does neatly fit into the cyberpunky domain (pre- or post- or whatever): set in an accessible where earth has been overrun by The Comprise, a voracious digital hive-mind, and the remaining free-will humans has escaped out into the solar system. The protagonist, Rebel Elizabeth Mudlark, begins the story like all good protagonists, as the subject of shadowy forces out to get something she possesses – and, naturally, what she isn’t exactly what she possesses.

But what makes Swanwick’s novel so wonderfully unique is that Rebel isn’t really Rebel. Originally a restless personality tester, someone who tries on artificial identities, she did the unthinkable and found a perfect one for her – Rebel’s – and stole it. See, in the post/pre (whatever) world of Vacuum Flowers personalities, memories, abilities, are as changeable as putting on, or taking off, make-up. In fact, Swanwick is credited by many as being one of the first creators of wetware, the idea of ‘painting on’ software to do just that.

And a lot of painting goes in Vacuum Flowers, but to Swanwick’s credit he takes this esoteric and possibly-confusing concept and makes it deceptively easy to understand, the book completely readable and totally enjoyable.

Just like the best of Alfred Bester, Swanwick is also deliciously and dazzling inventive, each page sparkling with memorable details and dazzling inventiveness: a blindly-focused quasi-communistic society dedicated to terraforming Mars, a renegade ‘mob boss’ who entertains himself by twisting the minds of his prisoner/guests, a multiple-personality ‘hero’ who has just the right mind for pretty much any job … Swanwick coolly and seductively brings the reader into Rebel’s kaleidoscopically fantastic, yet completely real-feeling world.

Yep, there are a lot of labels that could be tossed at Michael Swanwick’s Vacuum Flowers: post-this, post-that, transhuman, posthuman, cyberpunk ... whatever. The best label, though, and one that fits the novel so very well is one that every writer wants to get: A Really Good Book.

There’s a scene in The Anubis Gates that’s stayed with me ever since I first read it, some twenty or so years ago: our hero, Brendan Doyle, a professor at California State University Fullerton (one of my old alma maters, by the way), has found himself magically transported back to London in 1810.

Doyle, fascinated by a time he’s only read about, but also devastated that he’s trapped forever in the past, is walking through a street market when he hears someone whistling a tune, a song he suddenly realizes he knows.

The tune? “Yesterday” by the Beatles.

For me, that’s a special moment of brilliance in a novel packed full of all kinds of brilliances: a shivering little touch of perfect story-telling. One of the things I think is particularly excellent about the book is the way that Powers sort of restrains himself in his writing. Put it this way, if someone else were to write The Anubis Gates, especially these days, they’d have a tendency to make the book’s language too closely mirror the style and language of the time. But what Tim Powers does in The Anubis Gates is, instead, get to the basic – and fantastic – nature of a book from that time without resorting to overly-elaborate tricks.

The story-telling language in The Anubs Gates is the best kind of writing, smooth and seamless – infinitely readable and totally enjoyable.

But back to what makes The Anubis Gates so special. Like I said, what Powers has done is create an marvelously enjoyable book filled with the characters and details that feel like they’ve come from every Penny Dreadful and broadsheet from the 1800s: Horrabin, the nightmare clown and king of the London beggars; Jacky, the beggar who is actually the daughter of nobility on a quest for revenge; Amenophis Fikee, magician and leader of a gypsy clan cursed to become the body-thief Dog-Faced Joe, and so much more.

But The Anubis Gates is not just a playground for the author’s vivid imagination, for many real literary and historical celebrities also walk across the stage: Byron, publisher John Murray and many others. The world Powers creates – or just the past of the real world he plays in -- feels vivid, real, and always enjoyable.

In the end, the Anubis Gates remains a classically stylish and brightly imaginative novel told in a delightfully elegant way – an enjoyable read that feels timeless, which is quite an accomplishment for a book about time and travel.

Rude Mechanicals

Better Than The Real Thing

The Bachelor Machine

Bondage By The Bay

My Love Of All That Is Bizarre

Pirate Booty

Sex In San Francisco

Licks And Promises

Pornotopia

Welcome To Weirdsville

Calling M.Christian versatile is a
tremendous understatement. Extensively published in science fiction, fantasy,
horror, thrillers, and even non-fiction, it is in erotica that M.Christian has
become an acknowledged master, with stories in such anthologies as
Best American Erotica, Best Gay Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica, Best Bisexual
Erotica, Best Fetish Erotica, and in fact too many anthologies, magazines, and
sites to name.In erotica,
M.Christian is known and respected not just for his passion on the page but
also his staggering imagination and chameleonic ability to successfully and
convincingly write for any and all orientations.

But M.Christian has other tricks up
his literary sleeve: in addition to writing, he is a prolific and respected
anthologist, having edited 25 anthologies to date including the Best S/M
Erotica series; Pirate Booty; My Love For All That Is Bizarre: Sherlock Holmes
Erotica; The Burning Pen; The Mammoth Book of Future Cops, and The Mammoth Book
of Tales of the Road (with Maxim Jakubowksi); Confessions, Garden of Perverse,
and Amazons (with Sage Vivant), and many more.

M.Christian's short fiction has been
collected into many bestselling books in a wide variety of genres, including
the Lambda Award finalist Dirty Words and other queer collections like Filthy
Boys, BodyWork, and his best-of-his-best gay erotica book, Stroke the
Fire.He also has collections of
non-fiction (Welcome to Weirdsville, Pornotopia, and How To Write And Sell
Erotica); science fiction, fantasy and horror (Love Without Gun Control); and
erotic science fiction including Rude Mechanicals, Technorotica, Better Than
The Real Thing, and the acclaimed Bachelor Machine.

As a novelist, M.Christian has shown
his monumental versatility with books such as the queer vamp novels Running Dry
and The Very Bloody Marys; the erotic romance Brushes; the science fiction
erotic novel Painted Doll; and the rather controversial gay horror/thrillers
Finger's Breadth and Me2.

M.Christian is also the Associate
Publisher for Renaissance eBooks,
where he strives to be the publisher he'd want to have as a writer, and to help
bring quality books (erotica, noir, science fiction, and more) and authors out
into the world.